Dungeons And Dragons Stormreach

Friday 29 August 2008

I felt in an MMO mood today, and as I did not have a valid WoW sub active, and LOTRO was unspeakably shitty, I thought i'd try out Dungeons and Dragons, another big name MMO from Codemasters.

It downloaded nice and quickly, and a trial key was easily obtained, And by about midday I was creating my character, DarkW ingstalker, Yes that space was deliberate. His last name really is Ingstalker.


As you can see, I stuck with the Generic human race with the fighter class. First impressions were pretty meh as both me and random dave looked upon it as just another mmo but when I got into the combat, I realised it was very enjoyable. For a start, You can block by hitting shift, and dodge around and positioning and movement affects damage. For example, your less accurate if you swing your sword while running headlong at someone while screaming like a banshee. This seems fair. Its all abit stat heavy, but lets not forget this is the RPG genre. Its easy to forget this though, as sometimes it feels like a dungeon crawling action game, this belief being strengthened by the primarily instanced quests. Its also nice to see an MMO that takes itself seriously, World of Warcraft started to really grate on me with its "comedy" elements, and the cartoony style rubbed me up the wrong way, None of these game breaking faults in a mostly social game, but still, Its nice to see a serious game with decent graphics. Helps the kobold slaying. And finally, Did I mention that there are Prestige classes, and that in true DnD fashion, you can Multi class? Its true.

There are however, A few downsides. The interface is needlessly cluttered, and isnt as smooth as World of Warcraft's, or indeed city of heros, so a simple trip to buy skills can be confusing, Let alone trying to read the map. This is further hurt by a Quest log that's like a Chinese encyclopedia, Full of information, but impossible to totally understand without an intricate knowledge of the game [or Chinese if you haven't dropped that metaphor yet.]
I am aware the game has been out for a very long time, but my recommendation stands. An MMO is never at its best at launch, and so i IMPLORE you to download this game [nice and tiny at 3gig download] and use a 10 day free trial, just to see if you enjoy it. After all, Its free right?

Labels: Dungeons and Dragons Online, MMO, PC, RPG, Stormreach

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Article Posted: Friday 29 August 2008 at 09:07.
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